


& The Silver Spoon

by thepurpleswitch (andchimeras)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 5 Things, Alcohol, Birthday, F/M, Gen, Injury, Kink, M/M, Parenthood, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-04
Updated: 2010-10-04
Packaged: 2017-10-12 10:29:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/123912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andchimeras/pseuds/thepurpleswitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of three SPN "5 Things" not-quite-fics, all prompted by cgb/mandysbitch. Five times John wasn't around; five times Dean drank alone; five of Dean's birthdays.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. cat's in the cradle.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mandysbitch](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=mandysbitch).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five times John wasn't around.

1\. **Bonding**

When Dean was born, John was in Iran. He had a picture of Mary that he carried in his flak jacket, he has it still. It is tucked in his wallet. She is six months pregnant, wearing brown corduroy pants with a wide stretch waistband, a white shirt, and a plaid flannel coat. Her arms are crossed between her breasts and her stomach. During the long hours of waiting in the desert, John would touch the outside of his vest, over his liver, where the photo was tucked against his fatigues. He imagined that Mary could feel him thinking of her, or that the baby could. He thought, "I will be home soon, please take care of yourself." He'd wanted a son from the moment he understood that children come from mothers and fathers. He thought, "Baby boy, take care of your mother."

 

2\. **Duty**

His boys were with Mrs. Hardy in August. Dean and Sam were sitting on Mrs. Hardy's orange living room carpet, watching GI Joe, Sam in his bouncy seat, Dean cross-legged beside him. Mrs. Hardy was making pancakes for Saturday morning breakfast. Her cat, Millicent, put her paws up on the side of Sam's seat and Dean reached to push Millicent away because you never, never let a cat get close to a baby, Dean. Cats can make babies sick; cats can be too scary for babies.

"Cat," Sam said, and patted Millicent's nose clumsily.

"Don't touch her, Sammy," Dean said. He pulled Millicent away, his hands around her stomach. Millicent hissed and scratched at his hand and he dropped her. She ran away, her tail held high like a flag of indignation.

"Cat!" Sam said.

"I know," Dean said. He looked at the bright pink scratch across the back of his left hand. Four tiny points of red welled to the surface. He went to get a band-aid from Mrs. Hardy.

Sam's first word was "cat," and John was training with an exorcist in Maine.

 

3\. **Sibling**

Sam has a science project due on Monday morning and forgot about it until Sunday night so Dean is trying to be patient, trying to help him construct a display explaining the complexities of photosynthesis. He knows his dad knows even less about this stupid shit than he does, but at least John would be able to say, "It's okay, Sammy, we'll get it done."

Dean is sixteen and all he can do is scowl and glue paper letters to cardboard with too much glue. Sam's eyebrows are drawn together fiercely, his mouth pursed with concentration as he carefully cuts out letters and diagrams of leaves. Dean knows Sam knows that Dean is pissed at him.

Dean asks, "You think Dad's going to be mad when he finds out I didn't have time to fix the crossbow, Sammy?" Sam hunches down in his chair and cuts out the center of an "O".

 

4\. **Tease**

John sends Dean home with a six-inch gash over his right shoulder blade and goes back into the acromantula's lair with Caleb and a home-made flamethrower.

Sam cleans the wound with alcohol, using sharp tweezers to pick out the spider hairs. Dean leans over the kitchen table, arms crossed. He presses his face against his arm when the tweezers slip and stab him. He wants to bite into his arm to distract himself from the pain, but he doesn't.

Sam's biology textbook and notebook are open on the table, in front of Dean, pushed out of the way when Sam saw that he was bleeding. He has midterms next week, has been studying for three days straight.

"I think I got them all," Sam says quietly. His hands are wide and warm on Dean's back, bracing himself and Dean.

"Sew it up," Dean says.

Sam moves away and pulls the suture kit from above the fridge. He puts it on the table beside Dean and doesn't open it.

"Do it like I showed you," Dean says. He can't do it himself this time.

"Yeah, I know."

Sam breaks the seal on the suture and threads the needle. Its tip is sharp and wickedly bright. It cuts through Dean's skin and he clenches his fists. Sam holds the cut closed with his other hand, tries not to tug too hard when he ties the knots. He doesn't try hard enough on the fourth stitch and the narrow tag of skin between the suture hole and the wound tears.

Dean cries out, high and surprised.

"Oh god, Dean. I'm sorry," Sam says.

Dean grunts and sets his teeth in his arm. He's not going to make a noise like that again.

Sam takes a deep breath and slides the needle through Dean.

Eventually, eight knots in a ragged row down Dean's back.

Sam douses the closed gash with alcohol and Neosporin, lays four two-by-two gauze squares over the works. He cuts two long strips of tape and two short ones, presses them down over the gauze and Dean's skin. The scar will cross and make a narrow 'x' with a thin white scar. Dean got that scrambling through a barbed wire fence when he was eleven. Sam remembers.

The scars together will look like a St. Andrew's cross.

Sam runs his fingers over the tape one last time. "Do you want me to wrap it up?" he asks.

"No," Dean says. He doesn't stand up straight. "Just have to take it off to change the bandage anyway."

When Sam was little, Dean would press his lips to wherever Sam was hurt and say he was doing it because Mom wasn't there.

Sam kisses Dean's shoulder quickly. Dean jerks away and turns to look at Sam. "What the hell?" he says.

"Feel better?" Sam asks, trying to smile.

Dean looks at him like he's trying to remember where they keep the exorcism kit. "No, jackass, it hurts like a sonofabitch," he says, and stalks off into the bathroom.

Sam puts the needle and leftover suture in their makeshift biohazard container and closes the suture kit. He puts it back in the cupboard above the fridge and starts studying again.

 

5\. **Original**

"He's going to kill you," Sam says.

"He won't know it was me," Dean says.

"He's going to kick your _ass_ ," Sam says.

"Only if somebody tells him." Dean points at Sam and narrows his eyes. "And if you do, I'll kick _your_ ass."

"You're going to be in _traction_ ," Sam says. "I'd pay money to watch you try."

Dean pours the kosher salt out of his father's salt cellar into a plain glass jar. He pours the supposedly blessed salt into the cellar and re-locks it with the tiny key.

"Dude," Dean says, "if this shit burns pink like Keene said, it'll be worth it."


	2. george thorogood reference.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five times Dean drank alone.

1\. **Jersey City**

He broke his leg. It doesn't matter how, except that he wasn't hunting. Dad drove Sam to his math camp in Hoboken, and then crossed into New York, headed to Arden to investigate a haunted Amish quilt or something. Dean had a broken leg, so Dean stayed home in their tiny one-bedroom apartment over an appliance repair store that used to be a front for a speakeasy. Every morning, around one, Dean woke to the sound of jazz interrupted, glass breaking, women screaming. Dean had never slept alone in this place, and this had never happened before.

If he could get out of the apartment, he'd do some research, but he was stuck inside until Dad got back. He was afraid to manoeuvre the narrow corner stairs on crutches. On the fourth night, he pulled out Dad's stash of Johnny and drank almost to the point of puking it all back up, then passed out on the hide-a-bed.

The bottle tilted in his hand as he slept, tilted until whiskey started flowing onto the bare floorboards. A stream found its way into a crack in the floor, and soon the bottle was empty. On the fifth night, the ghosts were silent.

On the sixth day, Sam and Dad were back. Dean didn't tell them about being woken up almost every night, or about how he'd made it stop. Dad would just want to exorcise the spirits for good, but Dean figured that any ghost who could be appeased by a little alcohol wasn't one in need of destruction.

 

2\. **Census**

He's driven through a hundred towns and counties named Winchester. There's just something about this particular place, barely six hundred people, wide empty streets. Something about it, slid in the asscrack of the midwest between Topeka and Kansas City, all grey wood and dusty brick.

Outside the only open bar, he looks over his shoulder and wishes he'd just sucked it up and driven through Lawrence instead of taking the long way around.

He sits at the pitted, varnished bar and traces water rings, yellowed circles on the brown wood. The bartender doesn't look at him, isn't trying not to, just doesn't. Puts a mug of beer and a shot in front of him. Dean drinks.

He thinks about taking a picture of the city limits sign and sending it to Sam, but he doesn't want Sam to know he was so close to Lawrence. He decides against it. He doesn't think he'll tell his dad he stopped here either. He doesn't know why he did stop, except the sign welcoming him to this dirty stain of a town--his name, painted white on green metal. Made him think of Sam off in California, left behind all of his family except his name. His dad waiting for him in Iowa Falls, nothing to him but his name.

Always tried not to think of himself like that, but it's hard when he's holding a gun with his name on it, when he does think of himself as a weapon.

 

3\. **Sterling**

He's in Utah. He's holed up in an abandoned cabin. He's hunched on the southern face of a lumpy little mountain, sitting out on the porch with his shotgun and a bottle of Jim Beam on one side. He's got a pair of tiny pastry tongs and a towel on the other. He hates to break out the emergency supplies. He's got a silver bullet in his thigh and it has to come out.

He drinks from a water glass, steadily, until half the bottle is gone. Enough to make his motions fluid, not enough to make him forget what he's doing or make him scared to do it.

The glass falls over when he sets it down again. He puts the towel between his teeth so he doesn't bite his tongue off. He glares at the tear in his jeans and the red wash of blood, dry on his skin and damp on the denim. He holds his leg down with one hand and picks up the pastry tongs.

The heavy sour taste of adrenaline on his tongue, stronger than bourbon, more present than blood.

 

4\. **Honest**

Dean dropped Sam off at the bus stop four miles from the two-bedroom farmhouse where they were living. The bus stop itself was an eight-foot wooden pole with a white metal circle nailed near the top, the word BUS painted on it in red.

Sam took his backpack and his two duffel bags out of the Impala's back seat and set them down. Dean could see the bus coming up behind them, not close enough to read the destination, stuck on the line of the horizon. Goddamn, he hated the prairie. Nowhere to hide.

They didn't say anything. Dean didn't want to just leave him there. Nowhere to hide. And anyway, what if Sam changed his mind. He wouldn't, but he might. He might look up into the door of the bus at the stranger sitting behind the wheel and realise he'd never gone so far without Dean or his father driving him. Almost clear across the country.

The bus arrived and the driver got out, opened up a cargo flap. Sam shoved his stuff in and stood back while the driver closed and locked the flap. The driver got back in the bus. "Give you a couple minutes," he said from the door.

Sam looked over at Dean for the first time since they got out of the car.

Dean didn't say anything, before, when Sam and his father were yelling at each other and slamming doors in each other's faces. He stayed out of it and he didn't say a word. He couldn't really say for sure if he'd spoken at all in the three days between then and now.

Sam, standing halfway between Dean and the bus, looked up.

"You call," Dean heard himself say. "You call me when you get there, Sammy, do you hear me?"

Sam nodded. He looked like he was in pain, and most of Dean was glad for it, glad for Sam to know that it hurts to leave. He almost wanted to tell Sam that it wouldn't stop hurting, even if he stopped leaving, but he didn't think he could say that and say goodbye. He didn't think he could say goodbye at all, really.

"And be careful, for Christ's sake," Dean said. He'd watched Sam pack his blades and his .45, he'd made as sure as he could that Sam wasn't going out there unprotected. He had a suspicion that Sam would toss it all at the first opportunity, but he hoped.

Sam nodded again. "Yeah."

"Okay," Dean said.

Sam raised his hand. "Bye."

Dean shook his head. He said, "I'm not saying it."

Sam shook his head back, so frustrated, such a familiar face for the last year. Dean just hadn't known why, exactly. "I'm going whether you say it or not, so--"

"So go," Dean said. "'Cause I'm not saying it."

Sam shrugged angrily. "Fine." He turned away and stomped up into the bus, his ticket in his hand.

The door closed behind him with a hydraulic hiss and slam, then the bus rumbled away from the shoulder, back onto the road and away.

Dean sat up on the hood of his car and took a flask out of his jacket. He drank and he watched the bus recede towards the horizon. It went on, and it didn't stop.

 

5\. **Fifteen**

His dad took Sam to computer camp in Fort Lauderdale and continued on to Spider Beach. The doors were locked and every crack in the walls was salted. The house almost smelled like a potato chip factory. Dean had been exhorted to Stay Inside and Not Talk to Anyone until his dad got back.

He opened the fridge and the six-pack of Miller Light was still there, sitting on the middle shelf, the bare bulb shining on it like some kind of sacred artifact.


	3. just a number.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five of Dean's birthdays.

1\. **Last**

He can hear the conversation in his head. Sam would kid about it, would make jokes and Dean would tell him to shut up, and then Sam would come out with something like, "Thought I'd be burying you long before you turned thirty, Dean." Sam would say, "Did _you_ even think you'd make it?"

Dean wouldn't answer. Wouldn't answer for days until Sam needled it out of him, pulled it out of him like a splinter. Dean would finally say, "I'm not what I once was," which is a line from a Western he saw when he was about nine, he thinks.

Sam would make that "wow are you stupid" face and say, "You're kidding, right?"

"I'm not what I once was," Dean would say, more emphatically, "and I'll never be what I was again." He is old, getting older, past his peak. He notices even now that he's slower on the draw, and he's squinting for real instead of for intimidation. He's going bald, for god's sake.

Sam would shake his head. "Dad--"

Dean rolls his eyes because of course Sam would bring up Dad.

" _Dad_ ," Sam would insist, "was older than you are when he started this life."

"Dad was a soldier," Dean would say. He would be cleaning a gun by now, trying to distract himself, and Sam would be sitting across from him, not letting him get away. "Dad was a _Marine_ , Sam."

"Dad was in boot camp for what, six weeks?" Sam would say, stubborn, because this is the one subject he knows nothing about. "You've been training all your life."

Dean would say, "No, I haven't." He wouldn't say that Sam actually had been training all his life, and what a shitty hand-to-hand fighter he turned out to be anyway.

"I thought you wouldn't make it, Dean," Sam would say again, and Dean would understand.

Dean would understand, so when Sam says, "Happy birthday!" and gives him a cupcake with a sugar tombstone on it, Dean says, "Thank you, Sammy," very seriously, and squishes the cupcake all over Sam's ugly green t-shirt.

 

2\. **Sweet**

Dean waits at the counter while the thin-faced woman scores his test. His fingers are curled over the edge, tapping on the top. The DMV woman looks up at him over the top of her glasses with watery, red-rimmed eyes. Dean presses his fingers flat and is reminded of the hard plastic steering wheel wrapped in his hands. She smiles at him and puts a triplicate form on the counter.

"Sign here," she says, pointing with the pen, "and here."

He does, slowly and studiously, the way he sharpens his knives.

She takes the form back and tears it. She slides a grainy carbon paper copy across to him. "Congratulations," she says.

"Thank you," he says, picking up the thin paper with both of his hands, so carefully.

She winks at him. "Drive safe."

 

3\. **Merry**

It's one in the morning, Cassie is tossing his clothes at him, he is struggling with his jeans. His dad is waiting for him back at the motel. They're going to make a run at the gremlin nest underneath Morrison Elementary School. Dean is already half an hour late.

"Dean!" Cassie says, and he bangs his shoulder on a bookshelf turning to look at her.

"Fuck, ow, what?"

She has his wallet in her hands, his fake ID grinning up at her. "It's your birthday tomorrow."

He thinks for a minute--May 18. Right. "Yeah."

She puts his wallet beside her on her narrow dorm bed and reaches for him, grabs his hand. "It's your birthday today," she says, looking at his watch.

"Yeah," he says.

She unzips his jeans, which were only half-zipped anyway, says, "Happy birthday," and Dean could honestly give a fuck about how pissed his dad is going to be.

 

4\. **Kinetic**

His first birthday after Sam leaves isn't hard. It's just the same as any other day or birthday, really. Except that he's alone, because his dad is hunting a werewolf in Yosemite with Caleb. Dean is in Wyoming, sitting on a poltergeist. Waiting for the family it's terrorising to get freaked out enough to let him help.

He puts a foot up on the opposite seat of the booth he's in. The bar is dark, lit sparsely with golden beer signs. Men and women in cowboy hats lined up at the bar, clustered around tables, lounging against the jukebox.

Dean lifts his shot and is about to drink it when someone sits across from him, right beside his muddy boot.

"Hi," Keene says. He's wearing a denim jacket and heavy stubble. Dean hasn't seen him in six months.

"Howdy," Dean says.

Keene leans over the table. "You're staking out the Walthers poltergeist, right?" he asks, very quiet.

Dean takes his shot. "Yeah," he says after he puts the glass back down.

Keene takes a binder out of his backpack and opens it to a section marked "non-malevolent kinetic hauntings." "Want some help?"

Keene will say the incantation and Dean will hold the sage, they will trace the compass points and gate points together, hide the sachets in the walls together. They've done it a dozen times. Then, blood running down his back, the thud of the belt and the sting, Keene behind him, against him. He can think of worse ways to spend his birthday.

He shrugs. "Sure."

Keene smiles and flips a few pages in his binder.

 

5\. **First**

John wanted to do it at McDonald's, but Mary said Dean was still too little. He couldn't even eat the food.

"Every kid should have a birthday at McDonald's," John said.

"He will," Mary said. "Just not this year."

So his grandparents and aunts and uncles came, as well as three other families whose mothers had been in Mary's Pre-Birth Visualisation class at the community college. Everybody sat around the living room of the house in Lawrence on Mary's new brown plaid sofa set, admiring Dean's macrame bassinet.

The cake was white with cherry filling, his name spelled out in bright-coloured sprinkles. Mary lit the candle and brought it in, the light gilding her face and hair, making her eyes sparkle.

Dean reached up for her and John tucked his hands out of the cake and flame. Mary and John blew out the candle for him and everybody cheered.


End file.
